For our next upcoming campaign we're toying with the idea of nerfing the XP gain of warbands.

At the moment we're contemplating ditching the "free XP" gains for just surviving. This would mean that models only gain XPs if they take an enemy OOA or complete certain scenario specific objectives. It would encourage warbands to get stuck in and not flee after 2 turns in order to get the free XPs.

We're also toying with the idea of having some negative modifiers when rolling post match for models that have been taken OOA via criticals. For heroes on the injury table this would mean subtracting D6 from whatever you rolled. For henchmen it would mean a "killed" result on a roll of 1-3.

This would hopefully result in more maintenance costs for your warband and slow down the overall trajectory of snowballing warbands of death.

My main issue with this is that the surviving XP is there to reward playing games, rather than just winning them. You would be punishing the less successful players and if they lose just a handful of games they will fall behind the winners, who will have more and more chance of winning.

It very much depends on what your group is like but you would be helping the "win at all costs" palyers and hindering the more fluff-driven players.

I would suggest a cap on the total XP gained per game, rather than dropping the survival XP. Just off the top of my head... I've never tried it!

My main issue with this is that the surviving XP is there to reward playing games, rather than just winning them. You would be punishing the less successful players and if they lose just a handful of games they will fall behind the winners, who will have more and more chance of winning.

It very much depends on what your group is like but you would be helping the "win at all costs" palyers and hindering the more fluff-driven players.

I would suggest a cap on the total XP gained per game, rather than dropping the survival XP. Just off the top of my head... I've never tried it!

Yeah that's a valid point. However we're hoping that with the slower XP advances having one or two bad games wouldn't be as critical in that the victor hopefully doesn't get two far ahead.

Our gaming "group" has only 3 players so yeah it's rather easy to try new things out.

The XP Cap

The XP cap is also a good suggestion. It could work in that XPs gained from taking out henchmen do not stack for same troop types.

This would slow down uber heroes from farming easy XPs off soft troop types and might encourage some more adventurous play - that ogre is only on 1 wound so how badly do you want that extra XP for your hero!

Skill Tree Limit

We're also toying with the idea of that if your heroes can choose from more than 2 skill trees then they can't choose the from the same skill tree more than once in a row.

E.g. Your hero gains a skill and picks something from the Strength tree. If he gains another skill advance he can't choose again from the Strength tree until he has chosen something from another skill tree first.

Also you must take a unique racial skill for every 3 "new skill" advances.

This is intended to slow down the nasty combos of Strike to Injure/Resilient from two skill advances that turns your hero into a close combat monster at a fairly early stage of the campaign. Hopefully it would also encourage/force players to take skills they wouldn't normally choose.

We're planning to kick off our campaign in around 3 weeks time so definitely keen to test some of these out along with any suggestions from you guys.

Wow. †I have seen folks post house rules that nearly eliminate heroes dying at all and house rules that make it harder to kill big guys, but never house rules that make casualties more likely. †(I have also seen house rules that make black powder even harder to use though, that was odd too.)

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Yeah that's a valid point. However we're hoping that with the slower XP advances having one or two bad games wouldn't be as critical in that the victor hopefully doesn't get two far ahead.

By making EVERY game a bad game? †Is the less XP thing for heroes only or are you just eliminating henchmen from gaining experience?

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This is intended to slow down the nasty combos of Strike to Injure/Resilient from two skill advances that turns your hero into a close combat monster at a fairly early stage of the campaign. Hopefully it would also encourage/force players to take skills they wouldn't normally choose.

How? †That combination is from separate trees already, so you are just encouraging or codifying the combination not discouraging it. The warbands you are nerfing are those (which you probably are not playing with) that benefit from combinations from the same skill tree like a human warband that shoots would take Quickshot and Trickshot. Now they must take a Speed or Combat skill in between.

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Also you must take a unique racial skill for every 3 "new skill" advances.

Again how is that even possible? †If your group maintains its composition then your warband is the only warband in the group that HAS a unique racial skill set, unless you are also writing a new set for each warband? †Or are you allowing the fan made Vampire skills (which again are specific to a character type not a race...so how would they apply to dregs, ghouls and necromancers)? Or do you treat the Rewards of the Shadowlord as a skill tree? (If so I would recommend going by the rules as written.)

So what DO you like about Mordheim? † †

Your group has a unique approach to the game, have fun and let us know how it turns out!

Well, such drastic changes would make the game totally different. I guess it will unbalance some warbands and reward close combat slaughtering instead of tactics. For example, close combat beasts like the vampire, or sweepers like a dreg/youngblood with two-handed or halberd would make exp as usual, but more tactic roles like a runner, a sniper or support spell casters wouldn't. So why taking a runner or a sniper at all, it will be better to make every hero a close combat specialist. Some bands are also designed to rely more on heroes and some others on henchmen for the killing, if you reward only the killing that last group of bands will have a tough time developing their heroes.

Same thing making henchmen easier to die, it will reward getting poorly equipped and cheap henchmen like naked verminkin, and penalize expensive and well equipped henchmen like swordsmen or big guys. I think it will also make your band likely to be crippled if you loose the first couple of matches, unbalancing the game in favour of bands who start strong and tend to fade, and penalizing bands who develop slower but end up being strong.

I think the solutions for the issues you may have are not in the rules. I don't think you need to change the skill system to prevent a strike-to-injury/resilent combo (not so impressive in the other hand), you just need a decent marksmen with a crossbow and that two skills could easily go OoA before even being used (resilent works only in HtH, so that hero would be vulnerable to shooting and magic missiles). Then if you want to prevent voluntary routs to get free exp, change scenario conditions, but not exp system because that will start whole new set of issues.

Tell us your feedback if your are playing under that house rules, it will be interesting to see how the game changes.

Have you considered just halving the rate models gain experience? That way the less combative models, such as healers, still gain experience for completing their role as support troops. This would also slow down the rate at which models become powerful so would allow players to try and balance out the 'combat monsters' by getting better equipment.

Also going back to your original post and warbands fleeing just to gain exp, do you not play that you canít optionally rout until you lose 25% of your troops. Seems a risk way to gain exp. If this is proving a problem though just make a house rule that you canít optionally rout until you lose 50% of your warband.